Synthesis And Characterization Of Transition Metal Oxide Functionalized Mesoporous Carbon With Tunable Pore Size For Energy Storage

Abstract

Energy storage devices have attracted much attention in recent newlineyears as researchers look for nextgeneration materials for the development of newlinealternative energy sources Among the energy storage devices newlinesupercapacitors or ultracapacitors are unique and have attracted much interest newlinebecause they can perform better than conventional batteries and dielectric newlinecapacitors Furthermore the deficiencies of other power sources such as newlinebatteries and fuel cells could be overcome by supercapacitors newlineSupercapacitors have generated considerable interest for a wide and growing newlinerange of applications in various sectors including electric utilities factory newlinepower backup etc Several materials including porous carbons transition newlinemetal oxides and conducting polymers have been widely used as electrodes in newlinesupercapacitors newlineAmong the supercapacitor electrode materials porous carbons are newlineexpected to have a high specific capacitance together with a high power newlinedensity Despite the high specific surface area the low conductivity of porous newlinecarbon materials limits their applications in highpowerdensity newlinesupercapacitors This problem can be overcome by incorporating metal or newlinemetal oxide nanoparticles to the surface of the porous carbons materials newlinewhich would result in remarkable physical and chemical properties newlineMetal oxide nanocrystals have been extensively studied for their newlineunique magnetic catalytic and electronic properties In recent years transition newlinemetal oxides such as RuO and MnO have become promising materials for newlinesupercapacitors owing to their high pseudocapacitance Thin CuO films newlinesynthesized by electrodeposition and chemical bath deposition showed a low newlinecapacitance of 37 and 43 Fg respectively This may be due to the film newlinemorphology with low accessible surface area which affects easy diffusion of newlineions and electrons To overcome this to incorporate CuO newlinenanoparticles into a porous support with high surface area in order to create newlinewelldispersed active sites interacting with ions and the electrolyte newlineNanoporous carbons loaded with different amount